


Ashes

by leahalexis



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-05-29
Updated: 2001-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 14:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/419763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leahalexis/pseuds/leahalexis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Cassie was our link to the enduring certainty of time, our custodian of the real, then I was the prince of the moment. (Jake POV, book #54.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

We must all make our own sense of things.

Cassie did. Cassie had purpose. She always had purpose. More than surviving, more even than winning. Perhaps that was why she was the only one who could move on, who had a reason to do it. She was always a step away from it, from it all, even in the midst of battle she saw the line of things, the continuity. Our anchor. Our lifeline back to reality.

Rachel is dead. Tobias has . . . flown. Marco . . .

Marco is a realist. He enjoys the talk shows, the money, the cars, he enjoys playing the game, but his heart is not in it, he is not in it. He is purposeless as I am in his satisfaction, amusing himself with the American Dream. I wonder if he sees how he mocks it, taking it all so in stride. No real ambition, no passion-- this is not the real world to us, this doesn't matter, this world of pacification of human fear, of trivialities to distract us from our lives, from real decisions. I wonder if it's that he knows and doesn't care. Or if I am wrong and he finds some pleasure in those trivialities after all.

Our mission, our reason for being, is over. Earth is safe. But there were little things. Marco's mom. Tom.

We finished with different goals than we started, Marco and I. Is that the difference between us? That where mine were at odds, his were not? He got his family, his fame. Girls. Everything he'd ever even thought of wanting. All I ever wanted was to be a normal kid. To hang out and play video games. To be with Cassie. To grow up and become, I don't know, some white collar worker with a 401k and a cubicle. With Marco, the things he wanted are things he can get more of. No matter how boring his afternoons may get in theory he can continue infinitely achieving his desires. I can't have that. I can never get back the things I wanted, and I can't ever get rid of the memories, the changes, the time.

I didn't want enough before-- I was content with the way things were-- and then I wanted too single-mindedly. The focus saved our lives but could not salvage my soul. I wanted to win, to the exclusion of everything else. I had to. And Tom died, and Hork-Bajir died, and taxxons died, and yeerks died, and humans died. A human died-- Rachel died. My friend, my cousin, my fellow fighter. I had to. I wasn't getting my white collar job anyway. It's easier to make choices when you don't have any.

If Cassie was our link to the enduring certainty of time, our custodian of the real, then I was the prince of the moment. Of the surreal. That, I think, is what pulled us apart in the end. Cassie devoted herself, her life, to an idea; I to a thing. A thing that is over.

Of all of us, Tobias and I are perhaps most alike. Drifting, destroyed in devoting ourselves to the solid, to the concrete, to fights that can end and flesh that can die. The memories are not enough, the memories are not real. Only the ashes are real, the ashes of things that can't be buried. In the ground, in our hearts, or in our minds.


End file.
